New 'Delhi belly' vaccine shows promise, U.K. researchers say

For some western travellers, "Delhi belly" is an inconvenience, an uncomfortable malady that can cloud the memory of an otherwise perfect vacation to the developing world.

But in Asia, Africa and Latin America, "Delhi belly" -- severe diarrhea -- is far more serious.

The World Health Organization says: "Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death among children under five globally. More than one in ten child deaths – about 800,000 each year – is due to diarrhea. Today, only 44 per cent of children with diarrhoea in low-income countries receive the recommended treatment, and limited trend data suggest that there has been little progress since 2000."

Nearly every child in the third world will have "Delhi belly" at least once in his or her lifetime. Sometimes, a child can die in a day from the affliction because of severe and rapid dehydration.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge say they have developed a new vaccine that targets both E. Coli bacteria and salmonella. The vaccine comes in pill form and also promises protection against typhoid.

"The stakes are incredibly high," researcher Krishnaa Mahbubani told the Star in an interview. "Delhi belly is quite dangerous. Several million children under the age of six come down with this. this will be a huge. This isn't just about stopping discomfort for travellers for a few weeks."

Prof. Nigel Slater, who leads a team of scientists at University of Cambridge’s department of biochemical engineering and biotechnology, said trials on mice have yielded positive results.

Human trials are set to begin later this year on a few dozen subjects. Consumers won't be able to buy the pill for at least four or five years, Slater said.

The vaccine's technology is owned by the university and Prokarium, a pharmaceutical company. The British government helped finance the research, which has been in the works for about eight years, he said.

"The trick really was getting this vaccine into tablet form," Slater said. "these bacteria in the vaccine have to pass through walls of intestine to get to lymph nodes where they create the immmunity. There's an issue of cold chain in hot countries like India.

"So we had to develop a pill form where the bacteria would be rehydrated with water, but wouldn't be killed by the bile in the stomach. It was tricky."

News of the vaccine's promise was first reported by The Telegraph.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Mon Dieu! $3,000 for a bottle as French president auctions off wine cellar

Bottles of fine wine put on auction by the French presidential palace are displayed during an auction preview in Issy les Moulineaux, south of Paris.(AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)

It's like a garage sale -- except the garage happens to be in the basement of the French presidential palace.

And the puns are popping faster that the wine corks.

BBC News calls it a "sobering sale" as an auction of more than 1,000 bottles in the exclusive  wine cellar of the Élysée  goes on the block.

The news of the sale  -- part of French President Francois Hollande's belt-tightening measures -- had been reported last month, but now the auction is officially getting underway.

You can a rare peek at the exquisite collection of fine wines in this BBC video.

The BBC report quotes one connoisseur claiming that one reason there was so much good wine available was that the previous French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, preferred water.

But in fact the goal is to replenish the presidential party pantry with less expensive wines without taxing, so to speak, the public purse. 

The Élysée said that “the proceeds from this sale will be reinvested in more modest wines, and the excess will be returned to the state budget.”

According to the New York Times, the Socialist  Hollande was trying to contrast his simpler style as a “normal president” with the “bling bling” image of Sarkozy. 

Still, that had not stopped the last Socialist president, François Mitterrand, from enjoying his favourite Burgundy and a St.-Estèphe, Haut-Marbuzet from the well-stocked cellar. Georges Pompidou, the Times said,  preferred Chasse-Spleen, while Valéry Giscard d’Estaing favored fine Bordeaux from the Médoc.

If you want to add to your wine collection, you can fork out as much as 2,500 euros (about $3,360 Cdn) for a high-end vintage -- but there are some bargain bottles going for as little at 15 euros.

 Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star. he can be reached at jsher@thestar.ca and on Twitter @juliansher 

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Planting nutritious gardens to grow healthy children

An Afghan woman discusses planting a kitchen garden in a small village outside Herat. (Courtesy: World Vision)

The flowers you gave your mom yesterday for Mother’s Day probably look lovely on her dining table this morning and the brunch to celebrate now a cozy memory of the weekend as she gets back to the business of being a mother. The school run, packing lunches, sorting out laundry to name a few.

For some Afghan mothers that means sowing fruit and vegetable seedlings in the kitchen garden as the spring planting season gets underway.

Chronic malnutrition is a major problem in Afghanistan – 60 per cent of children suffer from stunted growth and one in three are underweight. To help mothers learn how to make sure their children get the nutrients they need, the charity World Vision has started 770 gardens in two provinces which are the worst affected and looking to expand the program.

Eggplants, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, okra, are some of the foods mothers in Ghor and Baghdis provinces are planting which they will harvest later in the summer to cook for their families.

I spoke to Lindsay Gladding, World Vision Canada’s senior program manager who is in Herat city, the capital of the western province of Herat where she is starting to identify villages that have the worst nutrition problems.

The issue isn’t lack of availability: Afghanistan’s fertile valleys yield delicious and plentiful produce ranging from apricots to pomegranates, apples to beans, tomatoes, spinach and many more.

The trouble is getting it to the table.

"We know mothers have responsibility for preparing food for their families and the experience we’ve had is the fruits and vegetables are not accessible," she told me. "They don’t have the seeds and if they do have seeds in the markets the families don’t have money to buy it."

With the help of Afghan authorities, the charity identifies families which have the worst malnutrition. Those who have access to a bit of land are given a choice of fruits and vegetables to grow. The seeds are nurtured in a greenhouse and after a few weeks the young saplings are transferred to the ground.

Gladding said in some villages cooking demonstrations are held in health clinics where mothers are invited to watch. Or sometimes, mothers with healthy children become involved in teaching their neighbours how to prepare nutritious foods. But access to clean water to maintain the gardens is a big problem and in many cases women have to walk an hour to the nearest well or stream.

The Afghan diet is heavy on carbohydrates and starch: rice, served with bread or potatoes and if they are lucky a little bit of mutton. All of this cooked with a lot of vegetable oil. Good food is linked to good health.

"The one thing we hear a lot is the high maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates and I want to stress that malnutrition is a significant cause of both," Gladding says.

Something to think about before rolling your eyes next time your mom tells you to finish your broccoli.

READ MORE: Afghan doctor working as a tailor in Toronto

 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

 

New Delhi turns to breathalyzers to keep drunks off metro

New Delhi's new metro is a symbol both of India's progress and of its problems. 

Started in 2002 and completed in 2010, the 189-kilometre metro is among the sprawling country's most impressive post-independence infrastructure projects, built on budget of less than $7 billion.

But after its completion, female passengers complained so often of being groped by men that the metro introduced ‘ladies only’ subway cars.

There are other rules to try to maintain order on board -- spitting is banned, as is sitting on the floor and public urination. No food and drinks are allowed on the metro, either.

Now, officials are adopting a new tactic in their battle to make rides more pleasant for commuters: they will be using breathalyzers to weed out drunk passengers.

Central Industrial Security Force deputy inspector Udyan Banerjee tells The Hindustan Times newspaper that the breathalyzers have already been tested in Rajiv Chowk, a metro station near Old Delhi, and will soon be rolled out at all 134 stations.

The hand-held breathalyzers will help police build a database of potential troublemakers, he said.

The move to address public drunkenness on the metro is just the latest in a string of recent efforts by Indian officials to highlight how the country's public transportation is safe, both for locals and tourists alike.

India’s latest "Incredible India" ad campaign to lure tourists shows Patricia Malone, co-star of the film The Mentalist, travelling across India alone, conveying a message that the country is a safe one for female tourists to explore on their own.

It's meant to showcase India as a safe destination after a number of recent high-profile assaults on tourists.

On March 15, a Swiss tourist was gang raped while on a cycling holiday with her husband in the central Madhya Pradesh state. Her husband was tied to a tree.

In another incident, a British woman jumped off the balcony of her second floor hotel room to escape a man she said tried to get into her room. That happened in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, the nation’s biggest tourist draw.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Forget grain-fed beef. How about a petri-dish burger?

McDonald’s has its Big Mac and quarter pounder. Could the petri-dish burger be coming soon?

Over the next century, the world’s population is expected to surge from 7 billion to more than 10 billion. With the agricultural industry already under strain to keep up with increasing demands, farmers around the globe are facing obstacles such as climate change, shrinking water tables and soil degraded from aggressive fertilizer use.

As questions mount over the world’s ability to feed a fast-growing population, scientists say they are making slow but steady progress towards developing “cultured meat,” meat produced in vitro, from a cell culture, rather than in vivo, from an animal.

According to a report published this week by Oxbridge Roundtable, a London-based think tank that says it connects academia with industry, cultured meat represents a way to keep pace with the increasing demand for meat.

Oxbridge said research groups in the Netherlands are close to announcing the development of the first in vitro burger.

Cultured meat production could help address environmental problems such as climate change, Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest, a nonprofit research organization working to develop meat substitutes, was quoted as saying in a 2009 article on cultured meat in the New York Times.

“Recent research at Oxford University suggests that cultured meat would reduce meat’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 90 per cent. It would do more for the climate than would replacing all of our cars with bicycles,” Matheny said.

Oxford notes the concept is hardly new.

In 1932, Winston Churchill wrote “fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

Oxford also notes some of the hurdles scientists face developing cultured meat.

“Stem cells from the desired farm animal must be extracted and grown,” the thinktank says. “So far, the stem cells of these types of animals have not been grown with unlimited replication potential. This has only been achieved from the embryonic stem cells of mouse, rhesus monkey, human and rat, all of which would most likely be met with public resistance. Use of adult stem cells of the desired animal seems to be the way forward in this respect but again there are several problems with the proliferation and successful culturing of these cells.”

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

ALEC vs animals? Ag-gag bills keep on coming

Battery caged hens are crowded together causing excessive feather loss and chafing. Birds on lower tiers are often covered in excrement from higher tiers. Photo courtesy of the Canadian Coalition for Farm
Animals. (CNW Group/Vancouver Humane Society)

ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council -- is an organization of high flyers who prefer to sail under the radar.

The corporate-funded coalition of big companies and mainly state lawmakers promotes a right-wing agenda of deregulation, privatization, anti-labour measures and shrinking of women’s and minority rights and environmental protection. It works through “model bills” that are handily presented to legislators and replicated in viral fashion across states.

But ALEC has crossed the publicity “whoa” line in the past month as a series of articles on “ag-gag” bills were published, throwing light on prospective laws that aim to criminalize investigation of animal cruelty to keep factory farm businesses free of prying eyes. The latest, published Sunday, was from the The New York Times.

Stop reading now if you’re eating.

We’re talking about Vermont veal calves skinned alive, deathly sick California cows pushed out to slaughter with electric prods, Wyoming pigs punched and kicked, Tennessee horses burned with caustic chemicals to improve their gait.

But the evidence painstakingly obtained by animal rights groups – including the Humane Society of the U.S. – is now under threat from bills tabled in at least a dozen state legislatures.

They would make it illegal to secretly videotape animal cruelty on farms, or to apply for a job without declaring oneself a member of an animal rights group or a journalist. And some decree a 48-hour-or-less time limit for turning over videos to the authorities, hobbling the ability to do lengthy investigations.

If the ag gag laws were in place in 2010, Cody Carlson told the Center for Media and Democracy, “I might be writing this from a cell.” Carlson, a former Humane Society investigator, exposed stomach-turning abuses at Iowa egg farms. A subsequent government investigation caused the biggest egg recall in U.S. history.

That wouldn’t happen if the recent bills go into law.

Although the current bills are watered-down versions of draconian “model bills” originally proposed by ALEC -- which were eventually defeated --  media monitors and activists are pointing fingers at it as the inspiration for the laws.

“We must be careful about drawing a straight line from ALEC to the new bills,” says Rebekah Wilce, CMD’s lead writer on food rights. “But it was the ideological predecessor of the bills.”

 ALEC originally proposed a law slapping those who covertly filmed animal abuse on livestock farms with a U.S. terrorist listing.

“This is another way to hamstring the checks that democracy and an informed society are supposed to put on everything from corporations to government,” Wilce said from her Madison, Wisconsin office. “It’s similar to the idea that if you can’t win an election, try to hamstring the vote.”

Sadly, cows, pigs, chickens and horses don’t get a vote in state legislatures. But it will be clear in the coming weeks what kind of animals do.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights in the U.S., former Soviet Union, Middle East and South Asia. She is consulting a vegetarian cookbook.

        

UN's tipsy dips: the sequel

When we left off last week, the UN’s tipsy diplomats were being (soberly) warned off the drink during working hours.

The U.S.’s ambassador for UN management and reform, Joseph Torsella, you may recall, had taken unnamed diplomats to task for inebriation during negotiations in the otherwise dry budget committee sessions.

That, according to the Washington Post’s veteran correspondent – and Turtle Bay blogger -- Colum Lynch, led to some unintended consequences.

Not only did some offended African diplomats stage a temporary revolt, but to Lynch’s surprise,  CBC Radio host Dominic Girard decided to do a spot on his pilot radio show, Sociable, on the drinking habits of UN diplomats.

There's also a Toronto connection. Sociable is about alcohol and society. And its resident bartender Oliver Stern, of the Toronto Temperance Society club, was called in to create an appropriate drink for the East River’s enclave of envoys.

But it was not without its hiccoughs, Stern admitted. “I played around with it in the restaurant below because I don’t have draft beer,” he said. “I tried it out a couple of times and it’s a very refreshing summer drink.”

The result: the Diplomatic Hangover – named after Lynch's original blog. And, he points out, it could be a contender for the rebooted menu of the UN’s much-missed Delegates’ Lounge (now under renovation). The drink, Stern says, is a diplomatic accord between the alcoholic beverages with which international envoys might toast a successful negotiation.

But there’s also good news for Torsella, and those who view a concoction of vodka, beer, sparkling rose and fruity cordial with a jaundiced eye.

“I’ve created a non-alcoholic version with just the cordial and soda,” says Stern, from behind his Toronto bar.  “It tastes a bit like the San Pellegrino sodas with a nice refreshing edge.”

Just ask for Diplomatic Immunity.

Olivia Ward was the Star's UN correspondent in the early 1990s.  She is looking forward to chasing down diplomats once again in the restored Delegates' Lounge.

 


 




   

China no landgrab leader in Africa, researcher says

A child playing in Kimambila, Tanzania. (Rick Westhead/Toronto Star)

The government has identified this village in Tanzania as one ready for development, and foreign companies have visited the district on a trade mission, raising local worries that they will be forced off their land.

Watchdog groups have warned for several years that Chinese companies are among the most voracious when it comes to swooping into Africa and snapping up the world’s last unspoiled bits of virgin arable land.

The U.S.-based NGO Grain, for instance, suggests China is among the worst offenders, alongside Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

“While seeds, water, financing, and energy are all necessary to agriculture, there is one obvious requirement that comes before all of them: you cannot grow food without land. But land grabbing by foreign governments (Kuwait, China, Saudi Arabia, and others) or by wealthy individuals, be they foreigners or nationals, deprives small farmers of that indispensable factor in the food equation. In fact, it turns them into farmworkers on their own land.”

The U.S. consultancy McKinsey & Co. estimates that Africa is home to 60 per cent, or 600 million hectares, of the world's remaining arable, uncultivated land, leading some critics to suggest this century may become known as the Great Selloff of Africa.

It's an important story, one that the Star sent me to Tanzania and Ethiopia to cover in 2011.

Turns out that China, an easy and frequent object of criticism in the west, may have received a raw deal with its inclusion as an alleged leading land-grabber.

In a story published in The South China Post, Johns Hopkins University Professor Deborah Brautigam, a specialist in Sino-African relations, says in an interview that as of March 2012, there is not a single documented case of a Chinese company investing in an agriculture project in Africa that covers more than 10,000 hectares. There are only a few, in fact, that are larger than 5,000.

The South China Post notes that Brautigam’s claim is support by another report, this one by Standard Chartered Bank, which estimates Chinese firms have leased about 100,000 hectares of land in Africa, far less than Indian and Middle Eastern companies.

Interestingly, a recent European Union report suggests E.U. imports of $60 billion worth of agricultural products from the world’s developing countries, more than the other top five together (the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.)

Ministry of Commerce data shows China imported about $2.8 billion of agricultural products from Africa in 2012, accounting for about 2.5 per cent of its total agricultural imports.

Data from Statistics Canada shows Canada imported about $35 billion worth of "agri-food and seafood" in 2012, the vast majority of which came from the U.S. The biggest African exporters of food to Canada were Ivory Coast ($175 million); South Africa ($158 million); and Morocco ($81 million).

Canadian companies have also come under the glare of non-profits. In October, the Canadian charity Oxfam said more than a dozen Canadina firms and pension funds were contributing to what it called one of the "greatest scandals of the 21st century" in the developing world, gobbling up arable farmland for commercial purposes that was being used already by locals.

There’s no doubt Africa is at the forefront of China’s collective conscience. During President Xi Jinping’s first foreign trip as president, he visited three African countries.

Brautigam said through 2009, Chinese aid financed the building of at least 142 farms and agricultural demonstration centres in more than 40 African countries.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

PHOTO: Passover preparations

Two boys watch as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, not pictured, burn leavened items in final preparations for Passover in the town of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, Israel, March. 25. Jews are forbidden to eat leavened foodstuffs during the holiday that celebrates the biblical story of the Israelites' escape from slavery and exodus from Egypt. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

New Brit strategy: Maybe if they are drunk, they won't notice what is in the budget ...

Big news coming out of the British budget – the price of a pint of beer will now be 1 pence less.

You have got to give it to George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. Guess he thought he could mask the bad news of Wednesday’s budget by, ever so  slightly, reducing the price of a pint.

Also in the budget, Osborne revealed the economic growth forecast for 2013 will not be 1.2 per cent as predicted in December, but 0.6 per cent.

That means the British are narrowly avoiding falling into a recession. But it also means the hardline austerity measures taken by Prime Minister David Cameron, three years ago, don’t appear to be performing any magic -- only pain.

Apparently, the London Evening Standard was so enthusiastic with the news on the reduced price of beer that someone on staff tweeted a image grab of the frontpage with the headline, “Things Can Only Get Bitter.”

That move was a big faux pas. On budget day in Canada and Britain, journalists are briefed and allowed to study the budget under strict agreement they won’t release details until the respective finance minister stands up to deliver the deets.

In Westminster, members of the Labour Party were ready for Osborne when he stood up to announce the budget. They jeered and waved photocopies of the Standard’s front page, the Independent reports. 

On the Standard’s website, Editor Sarah Sands posted an apology. “We are devastated that an embargo was breached and offer our heartfelt apologies.”

The unnamed employee who made the mistake has been suspended while an investigation takes place.

Oops.

Tanya Talaga is the Star's Global Economics correspondent. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga